Squash has made me live my dream

Mport, for me, is a way of life. It’s a part of my life. I would say, I was born into sport,” says Anju, the coun­try’s only World Cham­pi­onships medal­list in ath­let­ics with her long jump bronze in Paris in 2003.

“I was into sport from the time when I was prob­a­bly three or four and even now, I am liv­ing sport. And my wish is that my chil­dren should take up sport too, any sport.”

Anju was lucky. Wven her hus­band Robert Bobby Ge­orge, who was also her coach, has sport in his blood — he is the brother of the late vol­ley­ball great Jimmy Ge­orge.

Bobby fre­quently talks about sto­ries on Anju in The Hindu and The Sport­star that in­spired them when they were young and dream­ing big. For Bobby, every train­ing ses­sion with Anju was like an ex­per­i­ment dur­ing those days.

“Some of the sto­ries about Anju that ap­peared in The Hindu and Sport­star made us be­lieve in our­selves, made us be­lieve that we had taken the right step,” Bobby had said once. Anju, the for­mer Asian cham­pion and women’s long jump Na­tional record holder, said the sto­ries in the coun­try’s top sports mag­a­zine Sport­star mo­ti­vated her in a big way.

“The Hindu and The Sport­star tracked my ca­reer graph very closely, espe­cially af­ter I went to the U.S. for train­ing…every meet was fol­lowed very closely. And there were big sto­ries and my pic­ture was on the Sport­star cover too,” said Anju.

“It’s a big thing for a young ath­lete, it mo­ti­vates you in a big way, espe­cially since Sport­star comes from The Hindu group.” y life in sport be­gan as a kid when I used to go the Madras Cricket Club in Chen­nai, with my dad, An­jan Chinappa, who in­tro­duced me to squash. I played many sports grow­ing up, how­ever, I liked squash the best!

The sport has made me live my dream as well as chal­lenge my­self ev­ery­day to be a bet­ter ath­lete. It has given me ev­ery­thing I have to­day, so I am very grate­ful for that.

I have won­der­ful mem­o­ries as­so­ci­ated with Sport­star. I started read­ing it from the time I was re­ally young and had just started play­ing squash. I would al­ways run into the li­brary while wait­ing for my time on the court and read Sport­star. I loved see­ing all the pic­tures and in­ter­views of sports peo­ple I looked up too, but my favourite was the poster that came with the mag­a­zine. I al­ways took it back home with me even though it be­longed to the MCC. But the li­brar­ian was kind enough to let me have the poster.

Sport­star has al­ways sup­ported my ca­reer and I have been fea­tured in the mag­a­zine sev­eral times. I would like to wish Sport­star a very happy 40th! And wish­ing it an­other 40!